


Finding Peace

by Shadsie



Series: Robin and Jerome's Excellent Adventures [4]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Aftercare, Death Rituals, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Finding the Fallen Clones, Gen, Horde clone culture, Horde clone psychology, Jerome is a good brother to Robin, Suicide, The Kingdom of Dryl, bat-burritos, hive mind memories, memory bleeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28624998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: The fourth story in "Robin and Jerome's Excellent Adventures."  It is helpful to read the rest of the series first if you have not.Robin and Jerome find the fresh body of a Horde-clone whose death seems suspicious.  Jerome is not able to stop Robin from diving into the clone's last memories and suffering an unfortunate bleed-over of the dead man's despair in his final moments.  This was a markedly different kind of death than any they had encountered before.For as long as Jerome could remember, since he had met Robin, Robin had been the calm one who took care of him.  Their roles were reversed now as he takes a despairing and near-catatonic Robin back to Dryl to seek help from his friends to resolve his brother's mental state.(Be mindful of the tags if you are sensitive.  This story deals heavily with depression and suicidal ideation as well as a death by suicide).
Relationships: Entrapta/Hordak
Series: Robin and Jerome's Excellent Adventures [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940374
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	Finding Peace

**Finding Peace**   
  
  
  
Jerome un-hitched the donkey and put it on a long tether staked by some sweet grass. He patted the creature’s neck lovingly. Jack and his wagon were recent acquisitions that he had made with Robin. The vehicle and its power were on a more-or-less rental basis since the pair were wanderers. Jack’s owner in Thaymore had been skeptical as to whether or not Horde-clones could care properly for his animal, but they had learned quickly. Perhaps it was a side-effect of them being programmed to follow orders, but the instructions had come easily to them.   
  
Robin had gone on ahead, edging his way down the side of a ditch. Cliffs rose up above the area, which was very rocky and fairly unstable. They were in the Drylian Mountains, at the edge of the kingdom, far from the Crypto Castle and the city – “Waaaaay out in the weeds” as the Etherian colloquialism went. Jerome walked to the edge of the woods and grasses, found the rocky escarpment that his brother was picking his way down and followed after him.   
  
They were following a tip from one of the mining-villages they happened to be in for a supply stop. A little girl was sure she’d seen something they’d be interested in, but wisely had not approached it herself. Robin employed a pair of binoculars. Before Jerome could get down the rocks without twisting an ankle, Robin had found a stretch of relatively smooth land and was off and running over it.   
  
“Robin! Wait up!” Jerome called.   
  
When Jerome caught up to Robin, breathless, he found the other man standing before a body at the foot of the cliff. Jerome regarded the lay of the land. It was unlikely that the dead man would have tried to pick his way down the side-slopes as they had and slipped. He’d obviously approached straight from the land above. It was a clone, of course – one of their brothers, dressed in the ceremonial vestments of one of Horde Prime’s attendants, though darkly stained with body-fluids and with dirt.  
  
The corpse was reasonably intact for someone who had fallen from a great height. It was fairly fresh, indicating that death had occurred recently – within days, if not a single day. The village girl said that she’d seen the shape in the distance when on a walk just yesterday. He was laying face-up. Robin knelt beside him and lifted up his right hand, which bore a golden bracelet with a smooth purple gem. The two living men examined his face carefully.   
  
“No one that I know off-hand,” Robin said gravely.   
  
“Me, either,” Jerome concurred, “Although, he obviously was experimenting with differentiation, at least.”   
  
“Perhaps we should take him to one of the colonies and ask around?” Robin suggested, gently laying the ornamented arm down at the clone’s side. “He may have already chosen a name.”   
  
“It couldn’t hurt,” Jerome said, nervously looking around. “The ground is rather poor here for an on-site burial – very hard. And the wind whips through too hard for a pyre to be reliable. If you don’t pull your cloak close, you might lose it!”   
  
As it was, Robin did have his feathered cape tucked up under his arms and wrapped around him by the wind.   
  
The two brothers continued just to stare at the body for several moments. They were looking desperately for any defining feature – save the bracelet, of course – by which they might identify their fallen brother. 

It was, perhaps, the hardest thing for the progeny of Horde Prime to not entirely know their brethren. They had been swimming within each other’s minds from the moment they’d each been decanted – sometimes even before if they’d “awakened” early in their pods. The collective thoughts of the whole – insomuch as they were even allowed to think - had been the background-noise of their lives. The Voices of the Many and the One were generally concerned with practical matters – mathematics and logistics, military operations and maintenance aboard the Velvet Glove. Their mental-energies were also, of course, devoted to worship. Worship-hymns to Prime were often used to time maintenance-procedures.   
  
Every brother had memories that echoed from the others like half-remembered dreams, but they could usually pick out what had happened directly to them and what hadn’t. Both Robin and Jerome knew that they had escaped the honor of being concubines for Prime or for alien dignitaries he negotiated with. They felt quite lucky for that, in hindsight, since the impressions that they’d felt gave them a taste of violence in the sex and, outside of the hive mind they had not encountered many former concubines that had survived their full tours of duty. Those that had been treated gently seemed to be a special few. 

They also knew that the both of them had been deployed in battle on a few planets – Jerome on at least three, Robin on at least five – and had survived. Between the two of them, they knew that Robin was older and Jerome was younger by approximately one of the Velvet Gloves “cycles.” The brothers were still getting used to the way time was measured on Etheria and had trouble translating their “cycles” to Etherian-units. Jerome knew that he was kept to some of the lower areas of the ship and that other brothers seemed to assign him duties that kept him far away from the glory of Prime. He was self-conscious about this and still couldn’t shake the feeling that it was because he was seen as “unworthy” even as he learned the truth that some of his brothers had picked up on the mild defect in his visual-processing and were protecting him from being detected. Robin, for his part, had many memories of building, programming and repairing robots.   
  
But the truth stood that Robin and Jerome had only gotten to know each other _outside_ of the hive mind. It was strange, even aggravating, that during the time they had been the most connected, their information freely-shared and their thoughts colliding into one another’s and among the Horde, they did not know each other or any of their other brethren – not as individuals because the “individual” was not supposed to exist before the light of Prime.   
  
As they stood and knelt, respectively, before their lost brother, they spared glances at each other that communicated this unique shared pain in a way they had recently learned to do without the Overmind. No doubt, they had heard this one and felt this one at some point, but they did not know if they had ever known _him_. They did not recognize him among the individuated Hordesmen they had met.   
  
Robin brushed his fingers through the corpse’s hair and let out a little chirp. It was not like he could comfort him now, but the instinct came, anyway. He uncoiled the connection-cable from his belt-pouch to do a dive into his memory-banks – the only way they could find out a semblance of who he was.   
  
“There may be too much damage to the cortex,” he sighed.   
  
“At least death was likely instantaneous,” Jerome said. “Although the cliff’s edge should have been visible, even by the light of the night-moons… I don’t know how he could have not seen himself walking toward the end of it…”   
  
Jerome trailed off, looking anxiously at the precipice and down at the dead man as Robin fixed the cable-link. He shot his hand out. “Robin! Wait!”   
  
Robin was already hooked up and in the trance state they entered when they dove inside the records of their slain fellows.   
  
“Robin.” Jerome said simply, placing a hand upon his brother’s shoulder.   
  
Robin’s eyes went wide, his jaw went slack and an expression that Jerome dreaded masked his face. Jerome watched helplessly as Robin went “white-eared.” When Horde-clones were particularly distressed, afraid, wounded, sad, they would dip their ears. It was one of the few expressions that Prime had approved of – in his presence, of course, if one of them was being taken before him for discipline.   
  
Robin’s ears were pressed as far back and as flat as they could get as he stared into space. His hands hovered at the link-cable, trembling. Jerome’s breath quickened. Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong and it normally was not a good idea to break a connection suddenly, but he had to do something. He uncoupled the cable from the cervical-port on the dead clone and gently uncoupled it out of Robin’s. Robin sat in silence, continuing to stare.   
  
“Robin.” Jerome coaxed. “Robin? Robin!” 

He took his brother by the shoulders and looked him full in the face. Robin closed his mouth and wrinkled his brow, giving him sorrowful eyes. He seemed to be looking past him and he remained “white-eared.” Jerome gently shook him. He blinked.   
  
“Robin, are you okay?”   
  
“N…no,” he answered honestly. He grabbed at his cloak and pulled it over himself.   
  
“What happened?” Jerome asked gently.   
  
“W…w…worthless….” Robin muttered. “No purpose.”   
  
Jerome responded with an inquisitive chirp.   
  
“No purpose without Prime,” he whispered. “No purpose without Prime…”   
  
“Prime is gone,” Jerome said gently. “We are free. Remember?”   
  
Robin raised his voice, increasing in pitch. “No purpose without Prime! No purpose without Prime! No purpose without Prime!”   
  
All of a sudden, Robin bolted up and started crawling on all-fours up the rocky-slope. He eyed the precipice that loomed over the body of their client. Jerome gasped and bolted up after him. He tackled Robin to the ground and wrapped his arms firmly around him. “Oh, no you don’t!” he cried, having guessed at exactly what had happened.   
  
“Let me go! Let me go!” Robin pleaded, tears trailing from his red eyes. “Prime is gone! The Overmind is gone! Everything was a lie and we don’t belong here! We don’t belong here!”   
  
“Robin, please! Calm down. I’m here. I’m here.” Jerome let out a purring noise, unique to the spacebats. “This isn’t you! You’re being affected by the last thoughts of our brother! Just sit down for a moment.”   
  
Robin continued to struggle in his grip. “We were made for Prime!” he gasped. “What are we if we are not his exalted brothers? We don’t have any reason to continue! Let me go.”   
  
“I will _not_ let you go. We adopted each other, remember? As brothers in the Etherian-family sense. What kind of a brother would I be if I let you do this? You aren’t thinking straight. Just breathe, okay?”   
  


Jerome had been very effective in his tackle and hold. Robin could not get any part of his body free to injure him. This was combat-programming at work. The clones did not always have to murder the enemy – more often than not, they could subdue any unruly villager or would-be rebel. In hindsight, Prime was not nearly as merciful as he pretended to be, but he aimed to control planets with resources he desired and enjoyed dominating their people. He would only destroy a planet if the populace could not be properly dominated or after he had milked every resource he could and all of the worship he could glean. In other words, a kingdom was not a kingdom without people in it and so his clones knew as many non-lethal combat-tactics as fatal ones.   
  
These were also useful upon any clones that had gone “defective” and were in need of cleansing in the Pool, a full reconditioning, to be sent to the front or to the Decommissioning Chambers. Jerome had a recollection of having used the hold once on someone who’d gone to the Pool. He was grateful for his luck that he had no recollection of ever doing this to anyone who had ultimately been decommissioned. It was cruel enough to know that the versions of them that had existed before they had awakened to themselves had taken part in past battles, with all of the ugliness of war.   
  
The Etherian people, for the most part, didn’t seem to know what to make with Robin – with his generally calm exterior punctuated by occasional dark humor, but Jerome had learned that the natives that met him tended to think of him as “innocent.” They were very wrong, but he decided that he’d do his best to live up to it.   
  
Robin was anything but calm now with his thrashing and screaming. Jerome was terrified.   
  
“Robin…”   
  
Jerome began chirruping. It seemed to be an instinct they had for comforting each other. The brothers didn’t seem to be aware of it until recently, but it was something that they all had some memory of doing in the bowels of the Velvet Glove when in contact with one another. Jerome wondered if it was something that their root-species had done before Prime had uplifted them. No… manipulated them. Altered them. Used them.   
  
Robin ceased his struggles.  
  
“Easy,” Jerome said. “You aren’t going to try to go up to the cliff now, are you?”   
  
Robin’s ears relaxed slightly and he took on a look of submission. “No, I will not.”   
  
“Good.”   
  
Robin looked down. “I was… am… I am being affected by our brother. His final thoughts were..”   
  
“So my suspicions are correct. It was no accident.”   
  
“Our brother chose to die,” Robin said with caught-breath. Jerome released his grip on him, but watched him warily. “He had been trying hard to adjust to our new home. His Etherian-caretaker gave him the bracelet. He had lied to her, telling her that he would be alright before heading out into the world. Maybe he wasn’t lying at the time…maybe he thought he was going to be fine, but… the doubts came. Right at the end, he was feeling…he was feeling lost. It was like the First Days after the Great Severing. He was trying, but he never left that feeling behind. He didn’t think we had any purpose. He saw no reason to keep searching for one. He was in great pain and just wanted it to end. He found the cliff last night.”   
  
Jerome stroked Robin’s cheek. “Come on. We’ll get you somewhere to rest.”   
  
“He may be right.”   
  
“Do we need a purpose, Robin?” Jerome asked sincerely. “The Etherians enjoy their lives and they never followed Prime.”   
  
Robin still had that vacant stare. “They were never Exalted Brothers. They are born by chance. They are not created-beings.”   
  
“Remember what Lady Entrapta told us. It doesn’t matter.”   
  
Robin was trembling. “It hurts, Jerome. Our brother’s mind hurt.”   
  
“I know. It must have.”   
  
“My mind hurts.”   
  
Jerome smiled at him sadly. “You need a focus. How about you focus on my hideous scars. Just look at my ugly face, okay?”   
  
“Your ugly face…”   
  
“That’s right.”   
  
Jerome held Robin’s hand and led him back to the wagon, where he grabbed one of their camp-blankets. He draped it over one arm and kept holding Robin by the wrist. He wasn’t going to leave him alone, even for a second. Robin followed him, his state “zombie-like” to use a term drawn from the local mythology.   
  
Jerome’s tandem heartbeat fluttered. He did not like this state of affairs at all. For as long as he could remember since he and Robin had first met, it was Robin who had taken care of him. He was the anxious one. He was the one with the easily-spooked hearts and the constant fear of no purpose outside of Prime until they had chosen something to do together – their mission of laying to rest the dead of their people. It was Robin who had always had the calm demeanor – perhaps with a little anxiety underlying it… it really seemed that they hadn’t met a spacebat who wasn’t a least a little worried about their “sins,” that Prime would return or - for some- that some form of him would not, depending upon their continued attachment. Robin and Jerome were “taking to the new ways well” according to their Etherian hosts, but sometimes, Jerome wondered if it was an illusion.   
  
Jerome remembered the day when Robin was brought into the group-home where he was staying in his first weeks after the Great Severing. The Etherians who’d taken him in had wanted to aid the brethren, but were struggling as to how. He remembered being surrounded by Talkers – people trained in healing who could be talked to about struggles. He was non-verbal at the time, not able to get anything coherent out of himself through his confusion and sorrow. His memories were a blur, but from what he could recall, all he did was weep and occasionally yelp. He curled up in any dark corner he could find and the Etherians kept proffering their food to him, begging him to eat. A few of them had acquired vials of amniotic fluid, but he’d refused those, as well. He was growing weaker and was letting it happen. The connection to his brothers was no longer present. Prime’s Light was absent. There was no mission anymore. Everything was a blank. There was no reason to eat, no reason to fight, no reason to continue.   
  
It was not a proper decommissioning, but it seemed, back then, that he was intent on decommissioning himself, even if it was by wasting away.   
  
And then a pair of the Talkers brought Robin inside Jerome’s room in that place, where he was curled into a corner. His brother was yet unnamed then, as he was. The new clone’s uniform was disheveled and it sagged upon his thin frame – thinner than his own. The new one casually ate a piece of some kind of a gray bar that he carried and swallowed it, after which he stared right down at him and barked an order. “On your feet, soldier!” Jerome had immediately obeyed. He did not know why – perhaps it was comforting to be issued orders by someone, even if that someone was not Prime. The clone that would become Robin handed him a gray bar and issued another order. “Eat!” He had done so without questioning it. Robin was none too kind then, rather gruff, but somehow, it was exactly what Jerome had needed at the time.   
  
Ever since, Robin’s collectedness and sense of mission had been good for keeping him together. In turn, Robin confessed that Jerome’s sense of emotion and his tendency to notice many small things helped him to appreciate their new life more than he might have alone.   
  
And now it was Jerome who was taking care of a catatonic Robin. This was highly uncomfortable. This was a role-reversal and Jerome wanted it to be over as soon as possible.   
  
“Help me,” he asked Robin as he spread the blanket on the ground next to their fallen brother with the bracelet. It was a plea, but Jerome voiced in with an inflection of authority to his voice. “Take his legs.”   
  
Robin obeyed as Jerome took the dead man by the shoulders. Very soon, they had gotten the man onto the blanket and wrapped up respectfully. Jerome cradled the corpse in his arms and looked back at Robin. “Follow me,” he said simply.   
  
Robin, in his daze, did so. Jerome gave him a look that told him without question that he would tackle him to the ground if he had to again. “Don’t look at the cliff. Get on the seat of the wagon.”   
  
Jerome was in mission-mode. He did the work of placing the body in the back of the wagon mechanically as well as hitching up Jack. He climbed into the seat beside his brother and aimed the donkey back toward the dirt-road they’d come down to get out to this area. 

Robin continued to stare into the middle-distance. “Where are we going?” he asked dully.   
  
“To the heart of Dryl,” Jerome answered him. “We are going to the Crypto Castle. Our brothers there might be able to identify our fallen one. More importantly, I think we may need Brother Hordak and Sister Entrapta to help you.”   
  
“Okay.” 

  
  
_______________

  
  
It was a quiet journey. When Jerome pulled up to the gates of the castle-town and was let through, his brethren that were there eyed him and Robin curiously. He waved to the one with the prosthetic leg. “I need the Lord and Lady” he said. “Please.”   
  
That one and another were as quick as they could to fetch Entrapta, who rode out to the wagon atop Emily. “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon! I thought you were on a…miss…on….”   
  
She looked at the blank face of Robin.   
  
“We need some help,” Jerome explained to her. “The last dive affected him in a bad way.”   
  
“What happened?”   
  
Jerome nodded back to the wrapped figure in the buckboard. “A fresh death,” he said. “And a suicide, I’m afraid – by defenestration. Robin did the dive before I could deduce what was going on. There was enough….enough crossover in our brother’s final thoughts into Robin’s that he is not well.”   
  
Some tendrils of Entrapta’s hair were rubbing Robin’s back. He didn’t respond to them. “There, there?” she said hesitantly.   
  
Jerome, sensing that he was in the presence of people who could care for them both, finally let himself cry. He gripped the sides of his head and pulled at his hair. “I… I don’t know what to do? I don’t know how to get him out of this state! I don’t know how to get him back!”   
  
Entrapta was gently picking up Robin and placing him on his feet on the ground. Resident Drylian spacebats climbed up into the wagon and took the corpse. “I… I also thought that maybe someone might know who he was?” Jerome asked. “Robin said nothing about sensing a name and we do not recognize him.”   
  
He stiffened at a sharp wail. His gaze shifted to the side where a pair of his fellows were holding the body gently, the head un-wrapped and were mourning. Did they know this one? Did they not? He couldn’t tell. Others gathered around.   
  
“Come inside,” a deep voice intoned. Jerome looked up to see a hand proffered to him. He looked up to see the distinct armor, the deep red eyes and the dark blue hair of Hordak. Jerome obeyed, taking the hand and letting himself be pulled down off the wagon’s front seat.   
  
An anthropomorphic robot and a random deer-folk Drylian resident took care of the donkey.   
  
“I bet you’re hungry,” Entrapta said. “Some tiny food and some fizzy drinks will fix you right up!”   
  
“We had rations this morning,” Jerome answered dully.   
  
“Perhaps a bath, then? That always makes me feel better.” 

  
  
__________________

  
  
Within the hour, Jerome found himself in a tub scrubbing his hale body with a sponge. He let green (non-electrified, thankfully) cleansing fluid drip off of him as he glanced up nervously at many different actuators and clawed robotic appendages.   
  
A knock came on the door.   
  
“Come in,” he said. Jerome was still becoming accustomed to this Etherian idea of “privacy.” Apparently, Hordak respected it very much. The former Scourge of Etheria entered the room with a set of Jerome’s freshly laundered and dried clothing over one arm. He laid the folded set on a stool next to the bathtub, which, itself, was next to a clone rejuvenation-pod.   
  
“You may also make use of the pod if you’d like,” Hordak offered. “To rest. I’ll have it cleaned after you - before I use it, so do not think that you are imposing.”   
  
“That’s quite alright,” Jerome answered, his eyes fixed upon the spider-like matrix of robotic arms that draped down from the ceiling.   
  
“They are shut down,” Hordak assured him. “They are for affixing my armor to my body.”   
  
“They look…unpleasant.”   
  
“I assure you that they are.”   
  
Jerome stood up, got out of the tub and toweled himself off – with no shame in being seen bare by another clone, even though Hordak winced a little. Jerome knew that his brother was quite ill and so was, perhaps, trying and failing to hide some jealously at him being a strong specimen of the species. Jerome had a faint scar on his belly. He’d apparently been stabbed at some point and had recovered, but had no memory of this. His half-remembered dream-battles blurred together. He started pulling on his clothing.   
  
“How is Robin?” he asked desperately.   
  
“Clean and in one of the sitting rooms with my lab partner,” Hordak answered. “Follow me.”   
  
“Any improvement?”   
  
“I have spoken with him, but he needs time and needs to be watched, still. May I suggest in the future that you take greater care in your mission?”   
  
“Yes, sir. I sensed the danger, but, as I said, I was too late.”   
  
“Hmmm.”   
  
“I think he handled this dive better than I would have.”   
  
“Let us hope that you will never know.”   
  
“Both of us have dived into the others and… haven’t had anything like this happen before! Even when we have felt actual last moments… it hasn’t been as hard.”   
  
“You have chosen a difficult mission,” Hordak said. “You may wish to ask yourselves if you should continue it. We have fallen on many worlds, unnamed and without graves. It never bothered us before.”   
  
“Your ears are back, Hordak,” Jerome observed. “You don’t like the idea of leaving our brothers as waste anymore than Robin and I do.”   
  
“That is true,” Hordak admitted. “I gave myself a name. I made myself free. The fact that so few of us have enjoyed the same privilege is bitter.”   
  
“So you understand why we undertake the peril.”   
  
“Yes, but you should remain on-alert and prudent.”   
  
Jerome pondered. “I think with other deaths, battle… the elements… Being caught by surprise, or fighting to the last… there is a different feeling than chosen-death. This is why I sensed danger. This is why Robin is in distress.”   
  
“Indeed. I assure you that we will take care of him as long as he needs it.”   
  
“You’ve been very good to us.”   
  
“It is but a fraction of my atonement to this planet, a thing I can never truly achieve.” Hordak turned around and gave him a serious facial expression as his hand hovered over a reader at a door. “I cannot bring back the lives of the Etherians I have taken in my…misguided conquest. I can try to save lives. Apparently, I have talked some of the brethren out of drastic actions, against Etherians and against themselves.”   
  
He opened the door. Jerome entered to find Entrapta sitting across from Robin at a table, lining tiny glass bird-figurines before Robin, who was wrapped up in a blanket in a tight burrito-formation. He was staring at the figurines and a tiny smile curled at the edge of his lips.   
  
“Come in! Sit down!” Entrapta beckoned. Jerome took the seat next to her.   
  
“Robin?” he asked.   
  
“Jerome…hey,” his brother said softly.   
  
“You look…comfortable.”   
  
“I can burrito you, too!” Entrapta offered.   
  
Jerome enthusiastically nodded, the Etherian expression for an affirmative. She had done this to him before – it seemed like something she’d done to all Horde-clones when in need of extra comfort. Her hair whipped around him, ensconcing him in a warm, fleecy blanket. He let out a little purr.   
  
He did not know why this felt so right. It was like being in the pod before decanting, perhaps, or taking rest between deployments, but softer, kinder. He took a moment to enjoy simply being warm.   
  
“Robin…” He said softly, turning his attention to his brother. “I am sorry that I did not stop you in time.”   
  
“You saved me…” he whispered. “It’s okay. You kept me from the cliff. I’m a bit bruised, though.” His ears dipped and he continued to focus on the blown-glass figures.   
  
“I picked these up from one of the local artists!” Entrapta explained. “Aren’t they cute? I thought he would like them, so they’re his now.”   
  
Robin managed to wriggle a hand out of a fold in his blanket and scoop up the tiny birds into a draw-string pouch.   
  
“You can carry them around and know that here at Dryl, we like you! And you can always come home!”   
  
“Thanks,” Robin said dully.   
  
“Just breathe deeply,” Hordak instructed. “Focus on right now. You are not your fallen brother. You have taken a name. You are Robin.”   
  
“I am Robin, yes…”   
  
Entrapta suddenly shot a finger in the air as well as one of her hair-tails. “Robin!” she all-but screeched excitedly, sending all of the spacebats’ ears perking. “I have something I need you to help me with!”   
  
He looked up at her curiously, but with his ears still tipped down.   
  
“There’s a hawk over on the west tower! They made a nest there! And… well, I try to make it a point to know all local species, but I can’t recognize this one! You love birds! Maybe you can help me identify it!”   
  
Robin’s red eyes widened. His ears pitched closer to normal. “Really? You need my aid in this?”   
  
“Yes! Let’s go!”   
  
Before anyone could say anything further, Entrapta had grabbed Robin by the wrist with one of her hair-tails and was whisking him out the door to an elevator, comically leaving his blanket behind in a woosh of wind that left it draped upon his chair.   
  
“Well, he did pick up a bird-book in Bright Moon,” Jerome suggested to Hordak.   
  
“Brilliant!” Hordak mused.   
  
“Hmmm?” Jerome questioned.   
  
Hordak folded his hands under his chin, resting his elbows on the table. “The intelligence and creativity of my lab partner truly knows no bounds. She is using a focus-tactic on him.”   
  
“A focus-tactic?”   
  
Hordak turned to Jerome, taking a relaxed position in the chair he was in. “Entrapta has spoken to me of her time on Beast Island, when her foolish friends reminded her of her insecurities and the island’s signal threatened to take her. I do believe I have spoken to you of the dangers of that landmass?”   
  
“Y-yes,” Jerome said with a shudder.   
  
“Adora managed to snap Entrapta out of an overwhelming despair by offering her the chance to inspect the First One’s craft that she later dubbed ‘Darla.’ The chance to study a relic peaked Entrapta’s interest, effectively dispelling the depression-state. She is attempting the same tactic on Robin right now. He enjoys Etherian birds, so it stands to reason that taking him to see an unknown bird will focus him back fully into his own mind and, once again, into a favorable mental state.”   
  
“Amazing!”   
  
“Isn’t she, though?”   
  
Close to an hour later, with other brethren in and out, Entrapta and her charge returned. “I can’t believe I got to see a silver-tailed hawk up so close!” Robin raved. He consulted his pocket bird-book. “A female, too! With eggs! You’re going to have babies on that tower, Lady Entrapta! It is so wonderful! They’re supposed to be very rare!”   
  
“She was so biiiiig, too, wasn’t it? I thought she was a harpy!”   
  
The two bumped into each other’s sides, Entrapta rising up on her hair, and were cheek-to-cheek for a moment. “Faaaaaascinating!” they sang as one.   
  
“Robin!” Jerome cried, running to hug him. “You’re back! You’re back to yourself!”   
  
“Oh, indeed, I am!” Robin sighed with relief. “I guess all I needed was something to get my mind off of work for a while!”   
  
“Well, you can stay here for as long as you like! Take a vacation!” Entrapta offered.   
  
“I think we might… for a few days,” Jerome said, clutching his no-longer-burritoed blanket over his shoulders like a cloak. “Thank you.”   
  
“The reports we have been getting over the last hour of your…um… client,” Hordak spoke, “Are that… he was unnamed. One of us knew him, but he had yet to choose a name for himself. He had wanted one, but had yet to find what felt right, since he remained in Prime’s sway an unfortunate amount.”   
  
Jerome looked down and let his ears dip. Robin gave him a glance.   
  
“Peace,” Robin said softly.   
  
Jerome’s mouth curled into a smile. “Yes…I hope he found peace, as well.”   
  
“It should be his name…” Robin said. “He was unable to find it while alive, but perhaps… well, if certain Etherian mythologies are correct, I hope that he can find peace elsewhere. And if they are not – if all is truly a void absent of being in the memory of Horde Prime, who lied to us and no longer exists, well…” Robin had a small quirk to his smile now, “I hope he found peace, anyway.” Robin looked to Hordak and Entrapta. “Is it alright with you two if we make the grave in Dryl and inscribe that name?”   
  
“Of course,” Entrapta said, a small tear at the edge of one of her eyes.   
  
Jerome gave Robin a wink. “For right now, I think I’d like you to show me that hawk!” 


End file.
